Big Lie: The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Get Poorer

[Chris]

Some of us can actually read and digest current/historical economic and financial data - such as words, charts, graphs, etc...

Go find any one of Chris' threads.

He's got (unsourced) charts up the kazoo

In the last 30 years 80% of the increase in after tax income has gone to the top 10%.

The class war is over.

The rich won.

I should consider re-opening the Psychic Friends Network

Silly post.

http://static8.businessinsider.com/...-547/half-of-america-has-25-of-the-wealth.jpg

http://learningfountain.com/blog/Blog_Tax_Rates_Rich.jpg

http://peakwatch.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452403c69e20133eca1fa97970b-pi

 

[Chris]

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The 400 highest-earning taxpayers in the U.S. reported a record $105 billion in total adjusted gross income in 2006, but they paid just $18 billion in tax, new Internal Revenue Service figures show. That works out to an average federal income tax bite of 17%--the lowest rate paid by the richest 400 during the 15-year period covered by the IRS statistics. The average federal tax bite on the top 400 was 30% in 1995 and 23% in 2002.

Richest 400 Earn More, Pay Lower Tax Rate - Forbes.com

 

[Chris]

Unequal distribution of income between genders, races and the population in general in the United States has been the subject of study by scholars and institutions. Inequality between male and female workers in the US has decreased considerably over the last several decades[1], inequality between black and white Americans has stagnated during that time [2](although not among other races), but data from a number of sources [3] indicate that income inequality over all has grown significantly since the late 1970s, [4][5][6][7][8] after several decades of stability[9][10]. While inequality has risen among most developed countries, and especially English-speaking ones, it is highest in the United States.[11][12][13]

While post 1970s increase in inequality (sometimes called the Great Divergence) has not been caused by a widening gap between the poor and middle class[14], but between the middle class and top earners, with disparity becoming more extreme the further one goes up in the income distribution.[15] A 2011 study by the CBO[16] found that the top earning 1 percent of households gained about 275% after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 1979 and 2007, (although this number has decreased somewhat since 2007 as a result of the Great Recession [17]).



Income inequality in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Some Guy]

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The 400 highest-earning taxpayers in the U.S. reported a record $105 billion in total adjusted gross income in 2006, but they paid just $18 billion in tax, new Internal Revenue Service figures show. That works out to an average federal income tax bite of 17%--the lowest rate paid by the richest 400 during the 15-year period covered by the IRS statistics. The average federal tax bite on the top 400 was 30% in 1995 and 23% in 2002.

Richest 400 Earn More, Pay Lower Tax Rate - Forbes.com

Equal outcomes for unequal contributions for the win!

 

[Katzndogz]

The rich get richer and the poor get richer too. Otherwise the poor would be living in mud huts.

 

[hortysir]

Go find any one of Chris' threads.

He's got (unsourced) charts up the kazoo

In the last 30 years 80% of the increase in after tax income has gone to the top 10%.

The class war is over.

The rich won.

I should consider re-opening the Psychic Friends Network

Silly post.

http://static8.businessinsider.com/...-547/half-of-america-has-25-of-the-wealth.jpg

http://learningfountain.com/blog/Blog_Tax_Rates_Rich.jpg

http://peakwatch.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452403c69e20133eca1fa97970b-pi

Silly troll.

Not img links, clown.

How about links to where the data comes from?

 

[Neotrotsky]

Yeah, it's all a myth - according to wingnuts.

Almost everything you believe is a myth. Liberalism is a vast collection of lies.

and half truths

 

[edthecynic]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZo0PWx-GjQ]David Ackles - Laissez-Faire. - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Neotrotsky]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmSc8ZKvDKw]Holodomor - YouTube[/ame]

 

[earthling01]

This is pretty typical GOP Party Line B.S.

When you cannot argue the facts, find a statistic from a mound of overwhelming evidence that can support your belief. As has already been pointed out, the dates used in the OP where between 2007 and 2009. Here is that chart that supports the claim:

The Link Between Corporate Profits And Investment Is Dead - Business Insider

Mr. Sowe is not a real economist, but a shill for the GOP. If you support the GOP, your logic baffles me. These so-called public servants are bought and paid for by the wealthy. And they hire professional assholes like Sowe to use this anomaly (the logic of a 12-year-old) to make it seem that the wealthy have lost money, when in fact they lost very little.

What the chart really shows is that, in the 40-year period between 1970 and 2010, corporations have INCREASED their wealth from $100 Billion to $1.7 Trillion (with the exception of 2007-2009 where they lost a significant return due the housing bubble).

Indeed, what Mr. Sowe fails to point out is that, during those two years, the wealthy only manged to procure $1Triilion in profits compared to their usual $1.7 Trillion. He also does not mention that the profits return to $1.7 Trillion the very next year UNDER THE CURRENT OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.

So let me get this straight: Obama is robbing the wealthy blind while their profits sky-rocket? And yet, we can pin the class warfare on the Obama Administration because the poor lost homes/jobs while corporate profits went up? You mean their profits did not go up enough? I don't get it.

I, personally, do not feel convinced that the wealthy deserve our sympathy for profiting only $1 Trillion that one year. But what is truly disconcerting is that there is a huge sector of the US population buying into all this baloney. I suggest you on the Right are being softly led to the slaughter. I can see no logic in what Mr. Sowe has said, or why anyone one would bother to post/believe this blatantly Right Wing crap.

What we should be looking at instead are charts like these:

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/courses/so11/stratification/WealthIncome07.gif

Or this from Business Insider (NOT a Liberal Media Website):

Wealth And Inequality In America - Business Insider

Perhaps now would be a good time to take in all the dates, facts and statistics, not just the bits and pieces that promote our own agenda.

 

[Cecilie1200]

what the Obama Administration is really saying:

President Obama promoted his "Buffett Rule" again today, saying millionaires and billionaires should pay their "fair share" to help reduce the federal debt and pay for necessary government investments like education ...


but for the Wingnuts it is class warfare (in their minds) - anything but the truth.

Problem is, any monies collected will NEVER go towards debt reduction.
It will, merely, be more money to spend.

And they can talk to me about "necessary government investments" (as though there even IS such a thing as "government investments") when they cut all the UNNECESSARY government expenditures.

Don't even MENTION tax increases to me unless you have a fistful of spending cuts with you.

 

[Cecilie1200]

This is pretty typical GOP Party Line B.S.

When you cannot argue the facts, find a statistic from a mound of overwhelming evidence that can support your belief. As has already been pointed out, the dates used in the OP where between 2007 and 2009. Here is that chart that supports the claim:

The Link Between Corporate Profits And Investment Is Dead - Business Insider

Mr. Sowe is not a real economist, but a shill for the GOP. If you support the GOP, your logic baffles me. These so-called public servants are bought and paid for by the wealthy. And they hire professional assholes like Sowe to use this anomaly (the logic of a 12-year-old) to make it seem that the wealthy have lost money, when in fact they lost very little.

What the chart really shows is that, in the 40-year period between 1970 and 2010, corporations have INCREASED their wealth from $100 Billion to $1.7 Trillion (with the exception of 2007-2009 where they lost a significant return due the housing bubble).

Indeed, what Mr. Sowe fails to point out is that, during those two years, the wealthy only manged to procure $1Triilion in profits compared to their usual $1.7 Trillion. He also does not mention that the profits return to $1.7 Trillion the very next year UNDER THE CURRENT OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.

So let me get this straight: Obama is robbing the wealthy blind while their profits sky-rocket? And yet, we can pin the class warfare on the Obama Administration because the poor lost homes/jobs while corporate profits went up? You mean their profits did not go up enough? I don't get it.

I, personally, do not feel convinced that the wealthy deserve our sympathy for profiting only $1 Trillion that one year. But what is truly disconcerting is that there is a huge sector of the US population buying into all this baloney. I suggest you on the Right are being softly led to the slaughter. I can see no logic in what Mr. Sowe has said, or why anyone one would bother to post/believe this blatantly Right Wing crap.

What we should be looking at instead are charts like these:

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/courses/so11/stratification/WealthIncome07.gif

Or this from Business Insider (NOT a Liberal Media Website):

Wealth And Inequality In America - Business Insider

Perhaps now would be a good time to take in all the dates, facts and statistics, not just the bits and pieces that promote our own agenda.

"Mr. Sowell is not a real economist"? Really? Maybe you should go tell Harvard that, since they gave him an undergrad degree in Economics; or Columbia University, who gave him a Master's in Economics; or the University of Chicago, which gave him a PhD in Economics. Or hey, maybe you could go tell that to Stanford University, which currently employs him as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; or you could tell UCLA, Amherst, Brandeis, Cornell, Howard, Rutgers, AT&T, the US Department of Labor, The Urban Institute, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, all of whom have employed him as an economist.

And . . . I'm sorry, but who the fuck are YOU to declare him "not an economist"? What are YOUR credentials, again?

Just because someone contradicts your worldview and wishful thinking doesn't make them a shill. Consider the possibility that it means YOU are the shilll.

And you'll excuse me if not only Mr. Sowell's summary of the data carries more weight with me than yours, but also the CBO's. I don't honestly give a shit what data YOU think we "should be looking at instead", certainly not based on your airy, unsubstantiated dismissal of the OP sources as "not up to your standards". Again, who the fuck are YOU to decide who is and isn't qualified?

 

[auditor0007]

I got this story from Thomas Sowell's latest column, and am including a link to the CBO study he cites.

Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of “the rich” is going up, while other people’s incomes are going down. If you listen to Barack Obama, you are bound to hear this lie repeatedly.

But the government’s own Congressional Budget Office has just published a report whose statistics flatly contradict this claim. The CBO report shows that, while the average household income fell 12 percent between 2007 and 2009, the average for the lower four-fifths fell by 5 percent or less, while the average income for households in the top fifth fell 18 percent. For households in the “top one percent” that seems to fascinate so many people, income fell by 36 percent in those same years.

Why are these data so different from other data that are widely cited, showing the top brackets improving their positions more so than anyone else?

The answer is that the data cited by the Congressional Budget Office are based on Internal Revenue Service statistics for specific individuals and specific households over time. The IRS can follow individuals and households because it can identify the same people over time from their Social Security numbers.

Most other data, including census data, are based on compiling statistics in a succession of time periods, without the ability to tell if the actual people in each income bracket are the same from one time period to the next. The turnover of people is substantial in all brackets — and is huge in the top one percent. Most people in that bracket are there for only one year in a decade.

Thomas Sowell: Big lies in politics - Conservative News

CBO | The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009

Why do I think he's right, and we won't be hearing Obama present these facts?

Oh for Christ sake, how daft can one be? Honest to God, you take the two year period when the stock market lost half its value and then try to convince us that the rich have not increased their wealth dramatically compared to everyone else because they lost their asses during that two year period strictly due to the market losses. Never mind the fact they made all those losses up since Obama became President. I would imagine that low income people who had no investments probably did fair better than the wealthy for those two years, but that ain't fucking rocket science. And for someone as supposedly intelligent as Thomas Sowell is to use that as his argument, well folks, now even he has lost all credibility.

 

[rightwinger]

I got this story from Thomas Sowell's latest column, and am including a link to the CBO study he cites.

Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of “the rich” is going up, while other people’s incomes are going down. If you listen to Barack Obama, you are bound to hear this lie repeatedly.

But the government’s own Congressional Budget Office has just published a report whose statistics flatly contradict this claim. The CBO report shows that, while the average household income fell 12 percent between 2007 and 2009, the average for the lower four-fifths fell by 5 percent or less, while the average income for households in the top fifth fell 18 percent. For households in the “top one percent” that seems to fascinate so many people, income fell by 36 percent in those same years.

Why are these data so different from other data that are widely cited, showing the top brackets improving their positions more so than anyone else?

The answer is that the data cited by the Congressional Budget Office are based on Internal Revenue Service statistics for specific individuals and specific households over time. The IRS can follow individuals and households because it can identify the same people over time from their Social Security numbers.

Most other data, including census data, are based on compiling statistics in a succession of time periods, without the ability to tell if the actual people in each income bracket are the same from one time period to the next. The turnover of people is substantial in all brackets — and is huge in the top one percent. Most people in that bracket are there for only one year in a decade.

Thomas Sowell: Big lies in politics - Conservative News

CBO | The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009

Why do I think he's right, and we won't be hearing Obama present these facts?

That is an interesting reflection by Mr Sowell, but I wondered why he chose the limited timeframe of 2007-2009 for his analysis. What was happening in those two short years?
Oh yes.....I remember now
Those two years happened to be the Stock Market crash where the market dropped from 14000 to 6600.
So Sowell is highlighting that rich people lost a lot of money in the stock market crash and ignoring what happened before and after

Deceptive?

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of “the rich” is going up, while other people’s incomes are going down. If you listen to Barack Obama, you are bound to hear this lie repeatedly.

Link?

 

[rightwinger]

Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of “the rich” is going up, while other people’s incomes are going down. If you listen to Barack Obama, you are bound to hear this lie repeatedly.

Link?

She is moaning that rich people lost money in the stock market crash. That is why we should feel sorry for them

 

[edthecynic]

This is pretty typical GOP Party Line B.S.

When you cannot argue the facts, find a statistic from a mound of overwhelming evidence that can support your belief. As has already been pointed out, the dates used in the OP where between 2007 and 2009. Here is that chart that supports the claim:

The Link Between Corporate Profits And Investment Is Dead - Business Insider

Mr. Sowe is not a real economist, but a shill for the GOP. If you support the GOP, your logic baffles me. These so-called public servants are bought and paid for by the wealthy. And they hire professional assholes like Sowe to use this anomaly (the logic of a 12-year-old) to make it seem that the wealthy have lost money, when in fact they lost very little.

What the chart really shows is that, in the 40-year period between 1970 and 2010, corporations have INCREASED their wealth from $100 Billion to $1.7 Trillion (with the exception of 2007-2009 where they lost a significant return due the housing bubble).

Indeed, what Mr. Sowe fails to point out is that, during those two years, the wealthy only manged to procure $1Triilion in profits compared to their usual $1.7 Trillion. He also does not mention that the profits return to $1.7 Trillion the very next year UNDER THE CURRENT OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.

So let me get this straight: Obama is robbing the wealthy blind while their profits sky-rocket? And yet, we can pin the class warfare on the Obama Administration because the poor lost homes/jobs while corporate profits went up? You mean their profits did not go up enough? I don't get it.

I, personally, do not feel convinced that the wealthy deserve our sympathy for profiting only $1 Trillion that one year. But what is truly disconcerting is that there is a huge sector of the US population buying into all this baloney. I suggest you on the Right are being softly led to the slaughter. I can see no logic in what Mr. Sowe has said, or why anyone one would bother to post/believe this blatantly Right Wing crap.

What we should be looking at instead are charts like these:

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/courses/so11/stratification/WealthIncome07.gif

Or this from Business Insider (NOT a Liberal Media Website):

Wealth And Inequality In America - Business Insider

Perhaps now would be a good time to take in all the dates, facts and statistics, not just the bits and pieces that promote our own agenda.

"Mr. Sowell is not a real economist"? Really? Maybe you should go tell Harvard that, since they gave him an undergrad degree in Economics; or Columbia University, who gave him a Master's in Economics; or the University of Chicago, which gave him a PhD in Economics. Or hey, maybe you could go tell that to Stanford University, which currently employs him as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; or you could tell UCLA, Amherst, Brandeis, Cornell, Howard, Rutgers, AT&T, the US Department of Labor, The Urban Institute, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, all of whom have employed him as an economist.

Affirmative Action has been very very good to Tom!

 

[rightwinger]

This is pretty typical GOP Party Line B.S.

When you cannot argue the facts, find a statistic from a mound of overwhelming evidence that can support your belief. As has already been pointed out, the dates used in the OP where between 2007 and 2009. Here is that chart that supports the claim:

The Link Between Corporate Profits And Investment Is Dead - Business Insider

Mr. Sowe is not a real economist, but a shill for the GOP. If you support the GOP, your logic baffles me. These so-called public servants are bought and paid for by the wealthy. And they hire professional assholes like Sowe to use this anomaly (the logic of a 12-year-old) to make it seem that the wealthy have lost money, when in fact they lost very little.

What the chart really shows is that, in the 40-year period between 1970 and 2010, corporations have INCREASED their wealth from $100 Billion to $1.7 Trillion (with the exception of 2007-2009 where they lost a significant return due the housing bubble).

Indeed, what Mr. Sowe fails to point out is that, during those two years, the wealthy only manged to procure $1Triilion in profits compared to their usual $1.7 Trillion. He also does not mention that the profits return to $1.7 Trillion the very next year UNDER THE CURRENT OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.

So let me get this straight: Obama is robbing the wealthy blind while their profits sky-rocket? And yet, we can pin the class warfare on the Obama Administration because the poor lost homes/jobs while corporate profits went up? You mean their profits did not go up enough? I don't get it.

I, personally, do not feel convinced that the wealthy deserve our sympathy for profiting only $1 Trillion that one year. But what is truly disconcerting is that there is a huge sector of the US population buying into all this baloney. I suggest you on the Right are being softly led to the slaughter. I can see no logic in what Mr. Sowe has said, or why anyone one would bother to post/believe this blatantly Right Wing crap.

What we should be looking at instead are charts like these:

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/courses/so11/stratification/WealthIncome07.gif

Or this from Business Insider (NOT a Liberal Media Website):

Wealth And Inequality In America - Business Insider

Perhaps now would be a good time to take in all the dates, facts and statistics, not just the bits and pieces that promote our own agenda.

"Mr. Sowell is not a real economist"? Really? Maybe you should go tell Harvard that, since they gave him an undergrad degree in Economics; or Columbia University, who gave him a Master's in Economics; or the University of Chicago, which gave him a PhD in Economics. Or hey, maybe you could go tell that to Stanford University, which currently employs him as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; or you could tell UCLA, Amherst, Brandeis, Cornell, Howard, Rutgers, AT&T, the US Department of Labor, The Urban Institute, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, all of whom have employed him as an economist.

And . . . I'm sorry, but who the fuck are YOU to declare him "not an economist"? What are YOUR credentials, again?

Just because someone contradicts your worldview and wishful thinking doesn't make them a shill. Consider the possibility that it means YOU are the shilll.

And you'll excuse me if not only Mr. Sowell's summary of the data carries more weight with me than yours, but also the CBO's. I don't honestly give a shit what data YOU think we "should be looking at instead", certainly not based on your airy, unsubstantiated dismissal of the OP sources as "not up to your standards". Again, who the fuck are YOU to decide who is and isn't qualified?

Has Mr Sowell sold out that completely that he would sacrifice his obvious academic credentials to be a shill for the conservative right?

I mean really....who does he think he is fooling. I know lame brained conservative eat it up. But trying to sell a two year stock market crash as representative of how the wealthy have done over the last thirty years is just plain deception.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of “the rich” is going up, while other people’s incomes are going down. If you listen to Barack Obama, you are bound to hear this lie repeatedly.

Cecilie neg repped me for even asking, but I'll do it again

LINK?

 

[Noomi]

The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer? I can only assume two possibilities from that statement... Either the rich are getting smarter and the poor are getting dumber, OR the rich are working harder and the poor are getting more lazy. Either way... Things aren't looking very well for the work ethics of the poor.

No, the rich are getting tax cuts under the Republicans, which is why they get richer.